Alpha/Omega

[JB_From_Hell]

Planning on doing some guitar swapping next week, and getting a PRS SE Mark Holcomb. Aside from looking incredible, I’m really looking forward to trying the A/O set.

Ad jargon and whatnot aside, what can I expect? I can get along with most medium to hot bridge pickups, but how’s the neck? I love heavy riffing on an EMG81 in the neck. Not expecting this one to be crazy hot like that, but hoping it’s not another PAF-clone.

Also, I love how versatile the stock HFS/VB pickups are in my SE Custom 24. The split tones are great. Can I expect the same from the A/O?

[bloughlin16]

Re: Alpha/Omega

I rarely if ever use it for rhythm tones, but the Alpha is a fantastic neck pickup. Tons of pick attack, very tight bass, sounds very clear even under tons of gain, and gets pretty great clean tones, too. The Omega is exactly as advertised. It's definitely not super hot, but it has a very aggressive vibe to it that works for pretty much any modern metal style (to me, it even works well for modern hard rock). The split tones on the A/O set are fantastic. It's been a while since I played an SE, but I don't think you'll be disappointed in the versatility of the A/o set at all unless you expect them to be able to do jazz/vintage tones.

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Alpha/Omega

Thanks for the review. Your description of the Alpha sounds like it’ll do exactly what I’m asking. Tight bass and pick attack is what I wanted to hear.

Definitely not chasing any old school tones.

[Bowtomecha]

Re: Alpha/Omega

The alpha is a strange pickup. It’s more articulate than most neck pickups. Rather lean. I like it though. It kind of reminds me of when I wired a paf Pro in a neck position in parallel. Clear enough to actually use as a rhythm pickup if one wants to.

The omega is killer. It’s a very snarly pickup with personality. Definitely cuts through in a room full of Enter Sandman and Smells Like Teen Spirit Lol. Maybe just maybe a touch too snappy for my tastes but it’s a solid choice that isn’t a one trick pony like the Nazgul. If you’re aggressive, it rewards you well, but you can back off on it and it responds well too. Great pickup for people that struggle to push the aggression through their equipment.

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Alpha/Omega

I’m excited. This sounds like it should work really well.

[Bowtomecha]

Re: Alpha/Omega

You bought the Holcomb but didn’t try it out first? It’s a sweet guitar. I play it every time I walk in guitar center as a control while testing out other guitars. The only thing is it doesn’t have locking tuners, which is becoming the standard these days, especially on PRS. I guess they felt it didn’t need them because of the hard tail bridge. I think anything over 600 should have at least an inexpensive set of them on them.

You are aware of the flat fingerboard radius right? It’s 20 inches, flatter than Ibanez and Ernie Ball even. Your custom 24 is only 10 or 12 I think. I didn’t mind it, coming from a 16 inch radius but if you’re not doing monkey finger chords like Mark, it’s a little fatiguing for rootsy stuff with smaller hands lol.

[JB_From_Hell]

Re: Alpha/Omega

I'm very reluctantly trading my 8 string for it. I absolutely love the idea of 8, but it really needs to be multi-scale. Something like a Strandberg is way out of my price range, so I'm just tuning my 7 down for now.

I do crap like this all the time. The Custom 24 is awesome, and I think I'd like it more with a flatter board and slightly longer scale. Add to that, I can't find anybody saying a bad thing about it anywhere. And, I'm still impressed every time I pick up the CU24 at how good it plays, how well it's built, and the crazy variety of tones it covers.

As for locking tuners, I'd rather have a decent set of regular ones than cheap locking. Typically, I only put like one wrap over the string end, and not quite an entire second wrap under. The CU24 will tolerate a lot of that Dimebag Darrell harmonic divebomb stuff before it goes out of tune. Not the least bit worried with a hardtail.